


it only comes in waves (it must be chemical)

by coffeesomemore



Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: F/F, beca kind of figuring out how do feelings, egregious use of parentheticals and italics, set during movie, written mostly for the soundtrack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesomemore/pseuds/coffeesomemore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>while she was busy with a capella, Beca's personal soundtrack slowly evolved.</p><p>or, Chloe Beale, and the songs she got stuck in Beca's head during freshman year, which Beca would deeply resent if they weren't so catchy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it only comes in waves (it must be chemical)

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic almost a year ago, lost it for a while, found it again, insomnia-finished it, and now here it is. I haven't watched the movie again since, so all mistakes, canonical or otherwise, are mine.
> 
> the playlist of songs mentioned in this story is [here](http://8tracks.com/robonyong/it-only-comes-in-waves). title is taken from the Dzeko & Torres remix of "Strange Attractor" by Animal Kingdom, a song that is perfect for this pairing, this pairing is perfect for this song, etc.

The whole Barden situation, like everything in Beca’s life, started simple, and it stayed simple until suddenly Beca took a hard look at her life choices and realized that everything got messed up while she wasn’t paying attention.

 

It started with a rehearsal when Chloe wouldn’t stop singing “Countdown” every break they had, until Stacie gave up in the middle of group rehearsal and said, “Chloe got that Beyonce song stuck in my head and now I don’t know what I’m singing anymore.”

 

Aubrey rolled her eyes to Chloe. “This is already difficult enough,” she said.

 

“Sorry,” Chloe said. “I literally just heard it out of someone’s window on my way here. It won’t happen again.”  The corner of her mouth pulled down in a way that said _my bad_ , but it also said _sorry not sorry_. Beca caught herself staring.

 

So, super simple. Where it gets complicated is everything after that.

 

\--

 

All Beca wants is to get through her first (only) year at Barden with minimal effort. Aubrey Posen, on the best days, takes a lot of effort for Beca to get through, but Chloe seems to be able to handle Aubrey with a twitch of her mouth. Chloe seems to indulge Aubrey. If Beca could have, like, a tenth of whatever Chloe does to show up to Bellas rehearsal every day perky and patient to Aubrey’s manic and militant, she’d—well, she’d be a much better adjusted person, for one.

 

Instead, Beca’s just a damaged girl with a bad attitude, so she chews her lips until she can’t help mouthing off a little, not even that sassy, and then she watches Chloe put a steady hand on Aubrey’s shoulder and change the topic so Aubrey doesn’t choke on her own anger.

 

(Later that same rehearsal, Beca found herself running the stairs in time to _oh, killing me softly, and I’m still fallin’._ It was so horrifying she stumbled. Aubrey yelled at her. Beca did not have an eyeroll big enough.)

 

\--

 

(If Beca wants to be honest (she doesn’t), it started getting complicated before that. Before that was Chloe finding her at Hood Night, a little drunk, with her bright eyes and a confidence so friendly it’s creepy.

 

Before that, if Beca’s being really honest (she’s _definitely_ not), there was the summer Dillon introduced her to David Guetta, and Beca discovered how a song can stick in her head and take over her life. That summer, Beca couldn’t walk without a bass line thrumming somewhere in the back of her brain. She couldn’t mix a song without some bit taken from a Guetta song. She spent days hanging out at Dillon’s loft above the local record store with Dillon and his girlfriend Aly, recording Aly’s demo and messing around with mashups. The thing about David Guetta was that after a while, after Beca had moved on from recommendation to recommendation (there was a three week obsession with “Strobe” to mark the start of fall), hearing him reminded her of summer afternoons in front of her laptop, bobbing her head while Aly napped on the couch and Dillon worked in the recording studio.

 

Beca’s known Dillon and Aly for years. Sometimes, when she misses them and that windowless studio, her memory skips and she can only think about the living room at the end of August, crowded with old, broken down stuff Dillon was leaving behind when he made a break for LA and Aly left for New York. The clutter had knocked something out of her chest, started an ache that only lessened when she ran away from it. Sometimes the sky is a very specific shade of flat overcast, and Beca relives the winter freshman year when Aly had learned to play the banjo, the same winter her parents started fighting all the time. Sometimes it sucks to think of them. But listening to old David Guetta never sucks; it only makes her think of July 4th at the community pool when Dillon had set off a bottle rocket that shot inside the poolhouse and almost blown up the building and Aly had yelled at him and thrown his burger in the water.

 

Beca prefers to record her life in songs. There’s something indicative there, but she refuses to acknowledge it.)

 

\--

 

Beca’s hiding on the third floor of the library (the classics section, where the comfy chairs are), now that her dad’s started checking on her attendance record. She has her philosophy book open to the seventh page on the side table and Soundcloud up on her laptop, so there’s not really much attention left to pay when Chloe finds her. Chloe’s already sitting down in the armchair across from her and pulling out a notebook and stack of papers by the time Beca looks up and visibly jumps.

 

“Hey,” Chloe says.

 

Beca carefully pulls her headphones down. “When did you get here?” she hisses.

 

“Like a minute ago. I said hey, but you looked...busy.” She twists her mouth and winks on _busy_ , and yeah, as much as Beca prefers Chloe to Aubrey, she mostly prefers not seeing a Bella outside of rehearsal at all. This wouldn’t happen in LA. College experiences are the _worst_.

 

Chloe’s still staring at her with that sly curl in her lips, so Beca slowly closes her laptop and pulls her philosophy book on top of it. She flips a page, to make a point. “Yeah, well, I am busy. Gotta...read for class or something.”

 

“Okay. Sorry I disrupted you,” says Chloe, and she settles further into her armchair, spreading her papers out in a circle that goes from the wide arms of the chair to the floor and back around.

 

Beca watches her pull out a knot of earbuds and plug them into her phone before asking, a little too loudly, “What are you doing here?”

 

Chloe looks a little surprised, still trying to untangle the ends of her earbuds. “I have to write thirty pages by the end of this week. I used to come here all the time, it’s the comfiest place in the library.” She smiles tight-lipped and narrows her eyes, like there’s something wrong and funny at the same time. “What are you doing here?”

 

Beca shrugs. “Hiding.”

 

But Chloe, just like Jesse and basically everyone else here at Barden, watches her drop the hint and then steps right over it. “Great. We can hide together. Tom and I kind of broke up, so I’m giving him space. This paper’s really kicking my ass, though, so—” She tilts her head at her notes, like _Beca’s_ the one intruding.

 

Beca waves at her to go on, making the gesture as sarcastic as possible. She tries to focus on Derrida. Flunking out of freshman year isn’t the best way to prove that she’s ready to make it in LA on her own.

 

Not that Beca gets much reading done at all, because Chloe uses those standard issue Apple earbuds that leak sound all over the place, and even through the tinny echoes Beca can recognize the Florence & the Machine that Chloe seems to have the entire discography to.

 

Toward the end of Beca’s scheduled hideout, Chloe switches to a set of Diplo remixes that Beca knows well, an entire blend of speedy hi-hats and warpy synths that match up perfectly to her skimming speed, and she finally gets through (and maybe thirty percent understands) an entire essay. It’s enough of a victory. She slams the book shut and drops it in her bag.

 

Chloe looks up at the sound of her packing up. “Done?”

 

Beca nods.

 

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna go get lunch anyway. I’ll walk out with you.”

 

Beca fidgets with her headphone cord while she waits for Chloe to get all her things back in order. She kind of wants to bolt back to her room now. It’s not like Chloe really asked her to wait, she just—made it a thing. Also Kimmy Jin might be there. She waits.

 

“So what or who were you hiding from?” Chloe asks, once they’re in the stairwell.

 

“Nothing.”

 

Chloe raises her eyebrows. “Okay,” she drawls.

 

“It’s just—my dad’s a professor here, and he’s nosy,” Beca says, ducking her head. “He likes to think my life is his business.”

 

“Professor Mitchell in the history department?”

 

“Ding ding ding.” Beca lazily rings an invisible bell. “That’s him. But call him Doctor Mitchell, he likes that.”

 

Chloe makes a face. “That sucks. I mean, I’m really bad at updating my parents on things. I’d hide from them checking up on me too. But your dad seems cool. I had to take an intro class with him for one of my requirements. He liked me.”

 

“Yeah, well. He’s also my dad, so.”

 

Chloe stops at the library entrance and smiles at her. “I get it. I’ll see you later, right?”

 

“Totally. Later. Can’t wait.”

 

Chloe walks away and cuts across the quad, all fall in burgundy and gold and her red hair blending in with the trees, and Beca isn’t sure why any of that happened at all, but now she has the urgent drop beat of that remix stuck in her head. If she doesn’t find somewhere to plug in and listen to it all the way through, it’s going to be stuck there for days.

 

It’s still stuck by the time rehearsal starts. Beca can’t help humming it under her breath while the second sopranos to learn their parts. Chloe’s standing by the piano, coaching them through the phrasing. Her eyes slide to Beca while Aubrey’s doing a demonstration, and her mouth tilts into a smile. It’s—weird. Beca’s sure enough to say that Jesse’s her friend, and most of the Bellas are her friends, but she’s never had a friend like Chloe.

 

\--

 

Chloe runs into Beca a few more times in the classics section making halfhearted, barely visible progress in the rest of her classes, before she proposes a change. “Want to watch a movie somewhere else instead?”

 

Beca frowns. “I don’t really do movies.”

 

“You don’t—” Chloe stops. The corner of her mouth pulls down. “Let’s go get ice cream, then. Obviously you don’t really want to be here, and I’m kinda going crazy staying in the same place.”

 

“Fine,” Beca says, because it’s Chloe and Chloe’s let her be terse and sarcastic in pretty much every interaction they’ve ever had. Getting ice cream wouldn’t suck. Maybe if they run into her dad, he’ll stop calling her. It’s gotten that bad.

 

He finds them out on the quad, Beca cross-legged against the big tree in the middle and Chloe lying down with her head pillowed right above Beca’s knee, crunching on the dry point of her waffle cone. “Hi Professor Mitchell,” Chloe says, and Beca swears there’s an extra edge of perkiness in her voice.

 

It takes her dad an embarrassingly long time to remember Chloe’s name. He smiles down at Beca (who smiles with just her teeth at him) afterward like _isn’t it great that he knows her friends_. Beca glowers at him as he retreats.

 

Sometimes the only thing she can remember about him is the night he told her about this other family he had and this better job he needed to take for them, so he’s leaving, and he’s sorry, and Beca should understand that sometimes these things happen. The conversation had twisted around in her mind the whole drive from her house to Dillon’s, punctuated every step up to the door until it was so loud inside her head that she didn’t even have to say anything. Dillon had just let her curl up angrily on the couch and pick songs while he and Aly sprawled on the floor and played Paper Mario.

 

She can’t help it. The feeling has looped into her memory of the place. So many good things happened to her in that apartment, with those people, and that night almost ruins it, sometimes.

 

Chloe watches her. Beca can feel her concern, and she knows she’s revealing too much by just looking at him. It’s too late make a joke and apologize for how much of a dad he is, but then Chloe starts talking about the rest of the Bellas, how she ran into Fat Amy and Cynthia Rose at the same football party last weekend and that she’s seen Jessica around but she’s pretty sure that girl doesn’t do anything but sleep and show up to rehearsal (like her freshman year roommate, who was in the High Notes and had to drop out and go to rehab because of whippets which was just scary and that’s how Chloe got to adopt Aubrey as a roommate, because Aubrey’s roommate…well, Aubrey tells it better), and maybe that’s why Beca lets her reach up and take her free hand and hold it for the rest of the time before Chloe has to go to psych lab.

 

\--

 

It’s—the hand-holding is fine. It’s just another entry in the long list of ways the Bellas are extra touchy. Chloe’s the main instigator, but Beca also sees her more. It’s looped arms when they walk together and straight up twirling in each others’ arms during choreo even though Beca’s pretty sure she’s nailing the steps, _a square is not that hard_. There’s Stacie excitedly drumming her fingers against Beca’s back, and Fat Amy throwing an arm around her shoulders and leaning in to make really unsubtle jokes all the time (Beca doesn’t get why Aubrey chooses to yell at her more than Fat Amy about it) (Nah, she totally does, and it’s kind of hilarious).

 

Still, there’s something weird about how awkward Jesse’s sidehugs feel or how jumpy she gets when her dad tries to reach out and—hug? comfort?—her. Like she’d prefer it if she didn’t see it coming. Which, she knows, isn’t true at all. Her dad has a record of doing things without warning and so far, Beca’s hated every instance of it.

 

At least he stops checking in around midterms. Beca’s working on a mix at her desk and Chloe’s splitting her time between her thesis and a take-home. She has academic papers sorted by color and fanned out across Beca’s double bed, and Beca’s got her econ problem set pulled up on the desktop as a decoy to herself. It’s basically the paragon of productivity when Professor Mitchell knocks. Beca yells at him to just shove it open, she’s taped the door (because sometimes Chloe comes by and Beca’s in the shower or at the station or actually in class), and he leans in to see them both engrossed in their work. He stays long enough to say he’s glad Beca’s getting used to the college grind, which, Beca _can’t_ sigh loud enough after.

 

“He thinks I’m a good influence,” Chloe gloats.

 

“Yeah, okay. You win this one, nerd,” Beca says. “Because you’re definitely not.” She’s hung out enough with Chloe by now to know for sure. Chloe takes hourly dance breaks from everything. Chloe writes her papers drunk and only sometimes wakes up in time to edit them. Chloe asks slyly about how things are going with Jesse ( _platonically_ is Beca’s overly-sharp answer every time) and she’s a _Bella_ (which is kind of bad enough on its own, Beca thinks, but not as vehemently as she used to).

 

“I win every one, Mitchell,” Chloe replies, and the smug look on her face should be really annoying.

 

“Whatever. Want to order pizza?”

 

Chloe chews her lip. “Aubrey would kill us,” she says. “Let’s order pizza.”

 

\--

 

Chloe practically moves in for finals. Fortunately, Kimmy Jin has holed up in her friends’ common room to study for the week (she only told Beca so that Beca would know exactly which building she would not be welcome in). The two of them basically nest, Beca at her desk and Chloe in the bed. The trashcan fills with coffee cups and Red Bull cans and empty Sun Chip bags.

 

“I’m sorry,” Chloe had said, in that sincere way as though Beca would say _nope, I have a mutually respectful relationship with my roommate now and you’d be a total imposition not worth the disruption_. “It’s just—I love Aubrey, but she gets a little insane around finals.” At Beca’s shrug, she dropped her books and flopped back on the bed like usual. Beca had felt a sudden heart-pounding lightness well up inside her at the sight, which didn’t go away until she’d sat down and rehydrated.

 

Aubrey’s study schedule allows her thirty minutes per meal and puts her, and by roommate proxy Chloe, quietly asleep by ten every night. Chloe’s like Beca: “I don’t really start things ahead of time,” she admits. She’s just done a tally, and she has thirty-six pages left to write by Tuesday and a psych exam the Thursday after.

 

Beca raises her eyebrows and smirks, as though she hasn’t noticed in the past semester, and says, “Right. You’re more of a when-your-spirit-moves-you kind of girl.” Chloe stretches and kicks her, but it’s _Chloe_ , so more like a toe nudge.

 

Beca’s been staring at an old econ exam since two. That, and repeatedly convincing herself not to throw the textbook out the window because _oh my god it’s so pointless_. Not that she needs to stay up like Chloe does. She’s just turning nocturnal.

 

Chloe falls back dramatically. “I’m going to die,” she groans.

 

“Don’t do it in here, there’s already not enough room."

 

“I’m crashing,” Chloe decides. “I need my beauty rest. I’m not getting anything useful done.”

 

Beca looks over. In the glow from the lamp, Chloe looks burnt out, her eyes half closed and hair a glorious mess. Beca hasn’t slept in over a day, which brings on waves of lightheadedness that makes mixing music feel _amazing_ , but it also makes her think things like—like—it’s so late it’s early, the dim pre-dawn is just starting to come in through the windows, and the rain smells fresh and green and vibrant, and it echoes in the loud silence of these hours. It feels like time stopped and they’ve hidden in a tiny cave away from the world. Chloe grins goofily at her. Even upside down she’s _radiant_. Beca lets herself stare, blatantly, for a few long seconds.

 

“You should get some sleep, too,” Chloe says.

 

Beca blinks. She ignores the bloodrush in her ears. “ ’m good,” she mumbles.”

 

“Come on. I know for a fact that you don’t even care about your classes. I shouldn’t have to convince you to chill out about them.”

 

“But I’m so close to solving the poverty crisis,” Beca protests. She rolls her chair over, anyway.

 

“Come here, you weirdo.” Chloe shifts back and kicks her books to the foot of the bed so Beca can curl up in the parenthesis curve of her body. Her hand slides up Beca’s side, palming the edges of her ribcage. “You’re so freaking out, I can feel your heartbeat from here.”

 

“Not at all. Just, stoked to get back to work once you pass out.”

 

The corner of Chloe’s mouth pulls down. “Student of the year, Beca Mitchell,” she says. Beca’s eyes slip shut without permission. “Oh yeah, totally stoked.”

 

“So stoked.”

 

Beca can hear her smile. And then, of course, Chloe starts humming. Her fingers tap against Beca’s back and her legs twitch against Beca’s, and then she’s singing, low and smooth, _I need love, love to ease my mind…_

 

Beca’s heard this song before. Before, when her parents were still together, when they were still together and happy about that. On Sunday afternoons her dad would let her dig through his record collection and put the needle on the record she picked, and there would be the inimitable crackle and _werrr_ of the warped vinyl, and—

 

She wakes with a start, so fast her body still feels paralyzed. The panic courses through her mind for an entire terrifying minute before she understands that it’s a new day, and she’s at Barden, and it’s—. It’s fine. She just feels like she hasn’t slept at all, now. Chloe is sitting at the desk with Beca’s Sennheisers plugged into her own iPod, bobbing her head and messing around on her phone. When she notices Beca, she gives a half-smile, a wave, and a chipper, “Morning.”

 

“Uggghhhhh,” Beca replies.

 

“I ran into Tom in the hall and bribed him to bring us coffee.”

 

Beca flops her arm over the side of her bed, fingers extended.

 

“Really? Really.”

 

She wiggles her fingers. With an accommodating sigh, Chloe carefully passes her a paper cup. Beca pushes herself up so she can lean against the wall. Barely cracking her eyes open, she mumbles thanks in Chloe’s general direction.

 

 “You know, for someone who isn’t really into people and their drama, you’re kind of dramatic.”

 

A mouthful of coffee stops mid-swallow. Beca almost choke-vomits (which, gross) in an attempt to spit out _I am not_ , but the time she stops coughing, Chloe is flat out laughing at her. “Whatever. I’m supposed to be at the station soon, so…” Beca trails off, caught between kicking Chloe out and feeling awkward for wanting to kick her out. “I’m gonna go shower,” she decides.

 

“Cool, I’ll come with.”

 

“Dude, no,” is her immediate response, and she doesn’t feel bad about that at all, because _boundaries_.

 

“Why not—oh.” Chloe winks exaggeratedly at her. Beca kind of wants to disappear into the bed. “I meant to the station. Luke’s my lab partner, so I need to get notes from him anyway.”

 

“Oh. Okay. Let’s do a rewind on that. Chloe, I’m going to take a shower and then head to the station. Want to come with?”

 

“Sure, Beca.”

 

“Great!” Beca gives a super excited thumbs-up and then leaves the room as quickly as possible.

 

\--

 

“So, I didn’t expect you to be into Motown,” Jesse brings up in the middle of the shift. Beca is sorting her records listlessly, half paying attention and half watching Chloe _not_ work a shitty job here and still get to flirt with her boss in the studio.

 

“That’s me. Full of surprises,” Beca says, raising an eyebrow. “Are you creeping on me?”

 

“You were humming and I couldn’t not notice.” Jesse shrugs in that weirdly nice way. “You just seem a lot more...I don’t know, metal?”

 

Beca strains to raise her eyebrow even more. “As in bionic?”

 

Jesse laughs and shakes a finger at her. “I’m just saying, I’m into Motown, you’re into Motown, we should do a coed aca-duet or something.”

 

“Oh my god, dude, again with the aca- thing.”

 

“Fine, okay, message received,” Jesse says, backing away with his hands up, that stupid grin still on his face. “But let it be known that I was the one who extended the olive branch between our groups, and you were the one who took that branch and hit me with it.”

 

“Aca-whatever. You don’t know me.”

 

Jesse just laughs and picks up a box of records, _you can’t hurry love no you just have to wait_ under his breath as he takes it into the stacks.

 

Beca looks wistfully through the glass at the studio again.

 

\--

 

Chloe runs the last rehearsal before break, because Aubrey got so stressed during finals she lost her voice. Beca’s pretty sure that’s not a thing, except apparently it’s happened for the last three semesters, so, no big deal. All Chloe has to do is pass out the music for an a capella mashup that samples “Africa,” and things get hilariously more 80s from there.

 

Aubrey sends everyone home with a cardio set and a meal plan for every day of winter break. She’d made them up during reading week, Chloe confirms when they’re leaving the auditorium. “You can’t leave her by herself, again,” Beca insists. “Ever.”

 

“Whoa back up,” says Cynthia Rose, stopping so everyone else has to stop dramatically with her. “You weren’t there to veto this shit?”

 

“That’s worse than me being there to not veto it?”

 

Cynthia Rose concedes the point, and they keep walking.

 

“Besides,” Chloe says after a few moments of silence, “it’s not that bad. We need to stay in shape so we don’t lose our training. We have to maintain our strength. Aubrey just wants us to do our best.”

 

“Aubrey just wants to win,” Stacie grumbles, “by turning us all into her.”

 

Chloe says over her, “And our best will win. We’ve got what it takes. But we won’t be any good if we don’t work together. Or in tandem, I guess. If we don’t all pull our weight? Trust me, this time of the year always sucks, but if we bond over that now, we’ll be stronger and we’ll sound better at competition.”

 

Sometimes Beca thinks it’s a shame that Aubrey’s got the pitch pipe, because if Chloe weren’t busy trying to make Aubrey sound rational all the time, she’d be a pretty good captain. Then she realizes what she’s thinking and shakes it out of her head. Beca Mitchell doesn’t care who has the pitch pipe. The tradition is stupid, and so is a capella competition in general.

 

“You’re right,” Fat Amy says, “I motion that we, as a group, don’t follow Aubrey’s total crackhead plan, and we’ll strengthen our bonds over that when we get back.”

 

Everyone agrees in an instant. Fat Amy asks for a vote. Beca grins awkwardly and shoves her hands deeper into her pockets. Chloe jabs her in the side with her elbow.

 

“Jesus, ow, I didn’t even vote.”

 

“Don’t look so innocent, Mitchell, no one thought you were gonna do them anyway. You don’t need to vote.”

 

Beca smirks at her.

 

Chloe hovers on a response, her mouth in a half-smile despite her very real irritation with Beca. Then she smirks back and tugs at her arm so they can catch up with the group.

 

\--

 

“Africa” gets stuck in her head for all of break. Three weeks is long enough to get bored with home, and definitely not long enough to miss Barden, but the whole time Beca catches herself humming the _doo doo doo dododo doooo_ intro and pushing the rhythm into the revisions of her fall mixes.

 

It’s all Chloe’s fault. Beca’s entire fall playlist is tinged with the hushed tones of the library, the shadows thrown by her desk lamp, the quiet rustle of Chloe’s papers in her bed, the smell of autumn that comes through the gap in her window—it all reminds her of Barden and Chloe, and “Africa” is the last thing she remembers of both.

 

That, and Chloe texts her at one point, _omg i saw the sign just came on at this bar save me_. Beca cringes and responds, _bullshit no way_. Chloe sends, _bullTRUE yes way_ , and Beca demands proof. Chloe snapchats her a grainy video (all red hair and blue eyes and a smile Beca can still see in the dim lights) of herself mouthing along. She’d rather have Toto. Instead, she stalks Dillon’s career in LA and ends up spending ten hours straight listening to all his new music and his collaborations and his collaboration partners’ music. She almost emails him.

 

But then, Chloe’s current favorite jam comes up on Spotify (Phantogram’s new single, and Beca won’t lie, it’d be cool to hear a Bellas/Trebletones collaboration on that. She can just imagine Chloe’s voice on _keep your body still_ , _keep your body still_ ). Soon after that Jesse snapchats her a picture of all the snacks he got for a Star Wars marathon, and then Fat Amy manages to buttdial her from Australia. By the time Beca finishes distracting herself with her phone, “Africa” is back in her head, and all the heavy memories of high school get shoved back.

 

On New Year’s Eve she texts Chloe: _happy new year. This year’s resolution: no more Toto_

 

Chloe doesn’t respond until past midnight. She’s obviously confessionally drunk; she tells Beca, _youre super crazy talented and I love you_ , like, four times during the pages-long _letter_ she sends. It’s so sentimental and sincere Beca would gag if she weren’t busy rereading the messages the next morning. She’s too bleary-eyed by that time to do anything but smile. She smiles and scrolls up-and-down, and she lets something small twist and flutter in her chest without thinking too much about any of it.

 

\--

 

(She does, though. And she knows exactly what it means. She knows it the same way she knows how it feels to listen to Adventure Club thumping through Dillon’s living room after sunset: like nothing else exists except this beat, this room, this space in her head, except now—she _knows_ , okay, she knows how it’s going to end.

 

It’s fine. People will change, they always do. People come and go and blur in Beca’s life, but she can always make a mixtape and move on to a new song. No one will matter to her as much as music does, and _that_ won’t ever change. It’ll be fine.)

 

\--

 

“I am so done with Ace of Base,” Beca groans. They’ve only been back for a month, and they’ve rehearsed “The Sign” so much they’ve almost forgotten how to do it at all. “We should mix it up. Throw in stronger percussion. Like—what's that song you’ve been into, the one that starts off with the dude talking? The No Scrubs mashup?” Chloe makes a sound in the back of her throat, her teeth clenched around a pen cap. She tugs on Beca’s shoulder to get her to stop. “What—oh, come on.”

 

Chloe finishes filling out her add/drop sheet against Beca’s shoulder. The pen tickles. Beca tries not to squirm but the pressure of Chloe’s free hand near the base of her neck makes it worse. “Done,” Chloe pronounces, signing her name in a dash and capping her pen. She hooks her arm around Beca’s elbow and steers them toward her and Aubrey’s place right off campus. “And you’re still not doing that turn-kick at the right time, so don’t hate, okay?”

 

“I’m not hating,” Beca protests automatically. Then, off Chloe’s look, “Okay, yes, I’m hating. But we’re burning out. It’s—it’s not a good song, Chloe, and that’s _before_ the Bellas picked it up. I’m going crazy doing it over and over again. It’s only hurting us. We’ve hit the performance ceiling.”

 

“Yeah, I agree, but I’m still saying you’re not doing that step in time, so obviously there’s room for improvement.”

 

“But you just said you agree with me.”

 

“In that we could sing an objectively better song, and we could have flashier choreography, and we could take more advantage of our talent. I agree—”

 

“So what’s the problem?!” Beca hears her mouth slipping out of her control. That was stupid and argumentative and she didn’t mean to say that. Chloe’s been in a weird mood these last few days. Beca’s used to her softening Beca’s general edginess with an indulgent smile. Now Chloe’s all serious and exasperated, and Beca can’t help her immediate, kneejerk reaction, but no, _nonono_ , she didn’t mean to make Chloe frown and press her lips into a thin line like that.

 

“We’re not singing any other song, we’re singing this one. We’re doing this choreography. We’ve been given these parts. And for what it’s worth, we’ve won with Ace of Base before, so it’d be great if you would at least _try_ to help us win with it again.”

 

Chloe sounds totally normal, if a little tired, but there’s a harshness in her eyes that makes something in Beca shrink away. She ducks her head and stares straight down at her feet. They walk on in silence.

 

Beca’s never had a friend like Chloe before. Usually it’s because Chloe’s so _Chloe_ , but sometimes, it’s because Beca would’ve cut and run before it got to something  like this—before someone could have expectations of her, before she could disappoint them. Before she could care that she never figured out how not to disappoint them. It’s easier just to start people off with no expectations at all, present them with a bridge already half-burnt. She fucked this one up.

 

Beca opens her mouth to backtrack, maybe end up accidentally apologizing.  Instead, her heart skips. A stutter-shock of pain catches in her throat, like her body _knows_ she’ll say the wrong thing, and it pulls like a hook in her chest. So Chloe beats her to it:

 

“I shouldn’t have snapped. I’m sorry.”

 

“You’re—” Beca sighs, tries to talk past the block in her throat. “No, it’s okay. You’re right. I—um. This is the routine we’re doing. And it’s not a hard step to do right. I’m sorry.” She manages to shut up before she starts defending herself again.

 

The corner of Chloe’s mouth pulls down. “I wish this weren’t my last year,” she says. “I think that’s why Aubrey’s extra-fixated on this set. She doesn’t want to risk losing.”

 

That’s grossly ironic. Not that Beca’s about to point that out, because that would be missing the point. She pulls Chloe closer and lets her unlink their arms so Chloe can sling her arm around Beca’s waist instead. She leans her head against Beca’s, and they keep walking.

 

Beca gets it: she’s not being fair to Aubrey. If she’s being honest (which she doesn’t really want to be), Aubrey hasn’t been that scary-insane since break, even during this lead-up to regionals. Maybe she’s just used to it. With Kimmy Jin setting a new world record in consecutive hours occupying their room, Beca’s spent most of her free time either hiding in Jesse’s room (if Benji hasn’t set anything on fire lately), or, more likely, over at Chloe’s. Which means she’s seen a lot of Aubrey: Aubrey doing yoga, Aubrey watching _America’s Next Top Model_ (careful not to yell too much at the judges), Aubrey studying for her Constitutional interpretation class. Outside of rehearsal, Aubrey’s—well, still scary, but also pretty sane. Borderline thoughtful.

 

By the time they reach the apartment, Aubrey’s already there (and she’d left the auditorium a while after they did, so see, scary), boiling water for the ginger-lemon-honey tea she makes after every rehearsal. When she sees Beca following Chloe through the door, she only rolls her eyes a little and takes out another mug. (Her exact words when Beca first came over were, _I can only assume that you take care of your vocal chords the way a great white shark takes care of defenseless seals, but I’m sure you’ll learn through example and opportunity_ , and Beca’s drunk her share every time. It’s tea. It’s not that hard.)

 

Chloe sees her still-packed bag, the thermos on the counter, and asks, “Heading back out?”

 

“Yeah, I have a meeting with my adviser.”

 

“Ugh,” Chloe groans. “Stop reminding me.”

 

“You have to talk to yours sometime, Chloe. It’s bad form to turn in a late draft or worse, leave him hanging. Especially if he’s grading your thesis.”

 

“Sure, as soon as I have something to show him I’ll send it in.”

 

“Want me to look it over before you do?”

 

“No.” Chloe sits heavily at the kitchen table. “You know how I write. But if you’re bored in three months, want to speed-edit the whole thing…?”

 

Aubrey tsks in answer and sets one mug in front of Chloe. She hands the other to Beca without looking. “Is that your add/drop form? I’ll take it to campus for you.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Don’t stress out too much about your chapters. We need you at Xtina heights, not Britney circa 2007. Try not to speak for rest of the day.” Aubrey looks pointedly at Beca, as though it’s Beca’s responsibility to make sure _Chloe Beale_ doesn’t talk. She smooths out her sweater, and straightens into what she calls Law Posture. “All right, I’m almost late to being five minutes early. Bye, aca-bitches.”

 

Beca watches Chloe lean her head on one hand and blow listlessly on her tea. She gets it. Aubrey is Chloe’s best friend. She helps Chloe with her papers, makes tea for her nodes, and holds an actual opinion on the ombre hair trend probably just because Chloe does too (Chloe is for; Aubrey, after two weeks of persistent conversational exposure, is vehemently against). No one else could understand Chloe the way Aubrey does, and yes, Aubrey can be intolerably scary-insane, but she’s also Chloe’s best friend, and it’s their _last year_. Everything’s constantly at stake. Beca gets it, but all she can do is try not to make it harder.

 

She pulls out her phone and finds the instrumental half of the mashup that Chloe’s into right now. “I’ll take the high part,” she offers. Her voice cracks on the chorus; she sounds like an idiot and Chloe laughs at her. That doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid thing to care about, and Beca Mitchell doesn’t care.

 

\--

 

Beca can’t drown it out, this angry-frustrated-sad cycle she keeps going through after semifinals, now that she’d finally found a way to burn this bridge (more like destroy. More like _detonate_ ). It’s heavy, the way it curls around her lungs and echoes in her mind.

 

Jesse calls her for the entire day after she quit and leaves three voicemails before giving up. She deletes all of them without listening. There’s nothing to say. Beca was trying, until she wasn’t anymore.

 

(It’s not even worth pretending she doesn’t care, not when that sharp feeling slices through her and leaves her breathlessly angry every time she thinks about it. She thinks about it a lot. Beca’s pissed at Chloe because Beca’d expected more from her back there, more support, or more fight, or something. Beca’s mad at herself for expecting anything at all.)

 

Even Luke picks up on their sullen tension at the station, so he sends Jesse out to get coffee twice in one shift. Beca’s relieved. Also, mortified, but at least Luke doesn’t say anything about it. He takes the chance to talk more about her DJ shift over spring break and offers to let her into the studio the day before her first show and watch him work. “Don’t look so excited,” he says. “You won’t get to touch anything. Not even the light switch.”

 

Beca mock-salutes him, stretches for a smile, lands on a grimace.

 

She’s back to shelving albums with her headphones on when Jesse shows up with Luke’s large iced coffee, extra two shots espresso, three sugars. They finish out the shift in silence, careful to not even shelve on the same row. (Not that Beca is paying attention. She’s not doing anything differently. Jesse’s really unsubtle.)

 

\--

 

The first weekend of spring break, she’s mining her library for songs for her first DJ set when her hand slips and TLC starts playing loudly through her headphones. She jerks back so hard she pulls out the headphone jack and she has to scramble to mute it. With her ears still ringing, everything just feels dumb. Beca’s tired of being angry, but the only other option is just to feel shitty, which she’s so done with.

 

She’s pulling up her contacts and calling Chloe before she can convince herself it’s a bad idea. Chloe picks up on the second ring. “Hey,” she says, and Beca doesn’t understand how someone can sound so careful with just _hey_.

 

“I’m sorry,” Beca says. Her voice comes out too loud and too aggressive. She sighs. “That wasn’t—Can I start over?” The second sorry is easier. She stumbles haltingly through the rest of it, _I shouldn’t have said what I did at semis, I didn’t mean it_ , and tries really hard not to hang up and forget the whole thing. Chloe, with a gentleness that should make Beca sick, accepts it. It’s okay and she gets it but yeah, that was kind of bad, and Chloe misses her too (even though Beca didn’t say that).

 

Something keeps beeping in the background on Chloe’s end. Beca ignores it until she can’t talk about semifinals anymore. “Where are you?”

 

“I’m, uh. I’m in the hospital.”

 

Beca feels her heart jump, feels an awful wave break over her body. “Oh,” she says.

 

“I’m not dying,” Chloe is quick to reassure her.

 

“Oh good.” She hears exactly what Chloe doesn’t say. Now she’s worried, and she feels even shittier. She doesn’t know why she thought calling Chloe would make it go away. It’s still better than sulking alone in her room, though. Chloe needs to get that surgery anyway.

 

Chloe obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, so Beca spends a few minutes telling her about her DJ gig before lying and saying she has to go (because she’s already emotional and running out of words and soon she won’t have anything but _this sucks_ and _I’m sorry this sucks_ and _it’s going to be fine, I love you_ and that’s—that’s unacceptable).

 

“Good luck,” Beca says. “Break a leg? Don’t actually.”

 

“Thanks,” Chloe says, and then, “Beca, really. Thank you. Have you talked to anyone else?”

 

“Uh, nope, haven’t hyped myself up for that yet.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Beca hopes talking to everyone else will be as easy as apologizing to Chloe. Of course, she’s still not surprised that Jesse shuts his door in her face when she tries.

 

\--

 

Chloe texts her a few days later: _I can sing some. I know I shouldn’t push it, but I wanted to know!_

 

Beca bites her lips. They haven’t really been texting, what with Chloe having surgery. The last message was Chloe texting a picture of her dog. Beca had seen it five hours later and decided it was too late to respond. Her fingers hover over _you’re going to hurt yourself_ , which is so Aubrey-lite she cringes. _How high does ur belt go?_ is maybe too optimistic. She settles on _how’s it sounding_

_like a celestial choir descends from my mouth_

 

_I see you fishing for “angelic” there_

Chloe snapchats herself wide-eyed with one hand over her mouth, “NO EVIL” scrawled in bright red over it. Beca shakes her head and grins.

 

_Wanna hear?_

_Sure. Impress me_.

 

Chloe sends her a snapchat video. She sounds good. The same, as far as Beca can tell, but that’s not the point. Beca hasn’t seen Chloe in weeks, hasn’t seen Chloe’s eyes this bright in even longer, and the sight of her in motion hits Beca right in the chest. She misses Chloe.

 

That, and the song is—well, trust Chloe to send an unintentionally sexy video. The song is slow and longing, Chloe’s voice is a little rough, and her mouth, her stupid full red mouth curls around, “Sugar, call me. Tell me how you like it, tell me stories.” Fucking—fuck, is all Beca thinks, before shutting down that line of thought.

 

Beca can’t capture it, but she’s pretty sure she remembers all the details. Most of them. Enough. At least, she tries googling for ten minutes before giving up and texting Chloe, _what’s the song_. Chloe sends her a screenshot.

 

She still gets it wrong the first time, an _o_ where there’s an _a_ , but then she finds it. It worms into her brain. It settles.

 

\--

 

“Honey I’m hollow, fill me,” Beca sings to herself in the shower. “Take me to the wild I’ve been lo-onely.”

 

Working on the nationals mashup with the Bellas is exhausting. She barely has room in her head for new mixes, just the same list they’ve been going through over and over, adding pieces and then taking them out and then moving them somewhere else. It’s the most democratic mashup she’s ever done. Turns out, not only does everyone want something new to sing, everyone has an opinion on exactly what it should be. Beca had to actually make a case for the Simple Minds sample. (Fat Amy shook her head and said, “Yeah I’m sure it’ll _blend_ , but it lacks a certain made-after-we-were-born energy that I’m really groovin on,” complete with a full body roll. In the end, Beca had to get Aubrey to back her up.)

 

Beca hasn’t even had time to check out new releases. The last song she downloaded was the one Chloe snapchatted her, and it’s been her placeholder distraction for so long she might as well add it to her next mix. There’s a pause in the second minute that _needs_ to be matched to an insane bass line. She could even make an arrangement for the Bellas as an end-of-the-year thing. Stacie could definitely nail one of the lines without even trying.

 

Except, Beca decides in the middle of shampooing, the song won’t work for the Bellas. The arrangement she imagines is too deep, but she wants Chloe to take the solo. Beca thinks of _sugar, call me_ , and blushes. No one else will sound right.

 

She wastes two hours trying to tease out the vocal track on the original before she lets herself think it: it’s not just out of the Bellas. No one else, ever, will get as close to the sound in Beca’s head as Chloe.

 

\--

 

She wants to ask Chloe immediately to record it, but it feels too fragile. Thinking it is enough. Beca works other angles first. She downloads bundles of sound textures. She tries to convince Luke to let her use the tiny recording studio in the back of the station, but he’s still being weird about letting freshmen touch the equipment. She goes back to pairing the original with other songs and keeps adding new pieces until she’s sick of staring at the soundwaves, until she can stand to say it out loud with her headphones off, _I want Chloe_.

 

When she does ask, it’s the morning after Nationals, and Beca has a headache from staying awake through her afterparty hangover. She’d been too amped up to sleep. Chloe is beside her on the airplane, wearing sunglasses and double-fisting coconut water. Beca’s mouth hurts from smiling so much. She can still hear the joy in her voice when she lets it slip off her tongue, “So, I’m working on a remix of that Wanderhouse song. Want to lay down the vocals for me, make a little magic?” She winks, feeling a little lightheaded and out of her body.

 

“That sounds awesome. Yeah, I’m down.” Chloe slouches down her seat until her head fits in the crook of Beca’s neck. It’s the closest they’ve been since the whole semifinal disaster, and it’s oddly familiar, how Chloe’s breath ruffles across her chest. Beca runs her cheek along Chloe’s soft, sweet-smelling hair and closes her eyes. She’s never felt so comfortable, hangover and all.  And when they get back Chloe talks to Luke, and Beca gets the keys to the booth for the last week of classes. It’s amazingly easy.

 

It’s not until Chloe’s in the studio, Beca on the other side, that the absolutely full-blown status of the situation hits her. The soundboard tips it into critical. It's old school, with manual faders and only five presets. The headphones plugged into the side have torn up cuffs; they're the same model of Sony DJ headphones that Dillon had for a while. Beca looks at the board, through the window to Chloe making faces at the mic, and remembers a summer day mixing David Guetta mashups in a sunny living room.

 

When Beca thinks of Chloe, she of course thinks of the Bellas, but she also thinks of the radio station. She thinks of working together in her room, and David Guetta and Dillon and the cold winter walk from rehearsals to off campus. She manages to think of _her dad_ without wanting to hit something, and—Chloe signals that she’s ready and Beca swallows hard, nods at her to go—Beca feels like she needs to spend hours soaking up Chloe, days, weeks, but Chloe’s graduating soon, and that’s not enough time, it’s not nearly enough time for Beca to associate Chloe with everything good she ever wants to remember. It’s so unfair.

 

She looks up from the board. Chloe’s eyes catch her immediately. Her fingers tap delicately on her headset, and she sways to the beat, and her eyes are wide and clear and blue. Beca holds the stare. Chloe’s voice melts over _honey I’m hollow, fill me_. This is so bad. This is worse than “Titanium.” “Titanium” started out awkward, and it led to a capella sneakily taking over Beca’s life. “Sugar” gets under her skin. It’s a quicksilver livewire that jumps inside her, that makes something twist in her chest.

 

Chloe keeps staring for a few seconds in silence before Beca realizes that the song is finished. She leans into the PA mic reflexively. _That was a great take_ sticks on her tongue. She doesn’t look away. Her skin prickles. She gets being into people. She definitely gets being into Chloe. Chloe’s her best friend, and she’s _hot_ , and Beca’s seen her naked. It’s not hard to figure out. This is totally different.

 

Chloe Beale looped herself into Beca’s record.

 

And _fuck_ , Beca doesn’t know what to do about that, at all.

 

\--

 

Her dad finds her in her room tweaking the build for the remix. “I came to congratulate you on your win. You’re not looking thrilled about it.”

 

“It happened last week. I’ve moved on to bigger things,” Beca says, because she can’t say _I wish this year went on longer_.

 

“Right. Have you thought about what you want to do? You know, since you’re close to finishing your year as contracted,” he says. She can hear his self-satisfied smirk. It grates.

 

“Can we talk about this later?”

 

“Yeah, of course. Well, congratulations.”

 

“Thanks,” Beca snaps, and it almost feels right, almost like how she used to say it.

 

\--

 

(It’s not like she can do anything about it. Chloe’s leaving. She’s going to New York with Aubrey for a year to find an easy job and be young in the city before grad school. Chloe broke up with Tom (again) _because_ she’s leaving, she even said that she doesn’t want to graduate attached to him, and _wow_ , it’s amazing that Beca makes it that far before wondering if Chloe would even want her back.

 

Which isn’t worth considering, because it doesn’t matter: Chloe’s leaving.

 

Why Beca’s thinking about this and not LA is totally unrelated.)

 

\--

 

Fat Amy drags Beca to the library to study for the astrophysics class they have together. “Everyone calls it Stars for Stoners, it’s the easiest way to pass the science requirement,” Amy had pitched to her at the beginning of the semester. Beca definitely expected more stargazing. Instead, as she tries to cram an entire textbook of equations and theories, Beca keeps thinking of Chloe. Chloe had raised her eyebrows and said, “Oh, Stars for Stoners? I hear it’s actually pretty hard. But I heard mostly from the High Notes, so…” She twisted her mouth and winked. Turns out, stoners know their star stuff pretty well. Beca does not.

 

Amy announces, “This blows. I’m gonna text my hot TA.”

 

“Your TA’s hot?” Beca’s TA is short and soft-spoken and married. She ditched the problem-teaching part of class after the first two weeks.

 

“Duh.”

 

She refocuses on the chapter she should’ve read the first week of class. It’s completely useless. There is an unknown star of unknown mass that burns so hot and so bright that it shines across lightyears; by the time you (or someone, a student, _Beca_ ) on Earth can see its light, will the star still be alive?

 

The metaphor is so obvious Beca flips the book shut on it.

 

“Yeah, I feel you, B. Anyway, I’ve got a date with Peter. We’ll be fine.”

 

“Please don’t seduce him and then blackmail him for our grades. Please.”

 

“Oh, he’s not a Trebletone.” Fat Amy picks up her bag, which she didn’t unpack in the hour and a half that they spent in the library. “So, no worries, cap. Stop looking so depressed. I’ve got your back.”

 

Beca makes a face and sends her off with a salute.

 

\--

 

“I brought cookies, which are homemade by the way, and I brought vodka,” Chloe offers when Beca opens the door. Chloe sweeps in like it hasn’t been months since they’ve hung out in Beca’s room.

 

Beca follows behind her and drops into her chair. “I _just_ texted you. Did you run here?”

 

“I was prepared.” Chloe shrugs and settles against the desk a foot away.

 

For one clear moment Beca wants to fit her hand around the curve of Chloe’s waist and pull her in, to rest her head against her ribs while Chloe leans into her and breath in the way Chloe feels. Then she snaps herself out of it. She raises an eyebrow at Chloe. “You prepared? You made cookies? For little ol’ me?”

 

“Oh my god, stop. Yes, I did, because I’ve been so bored waiting for you to finish your exams.”

 

“Wow, your life sounds hard.”

 

Chloe pouts. “Don’t hate.”

 

Something stutters in Beca’s brain (it’s Chloe, specifically Chloe’s bottom lip, her melodramatic puppy-dog eyes, the open collar of her plaid shirt, and the splash of her red hair around her shoulders. Beca’s trying to stop not-naming it, because that doesn’t make it go away). She clears her throat and says, “Thanks for the cookies, I mean.”

 

“You’re welcome. Spoiler alert, they’re delicious.”

 

“I believe you. Anyway, I wanted you to come over ‘cause I finished that remix last night.”

 

Chloe’s entire face lights up. “You did? Can I hear?”

 

Beca automatically smiles in response and ducks her head and her skin is too tight and also flaying open all at once. “Yeah, of course.”

 

“Is this a first listen? Am I getting an exclusive preview of the brand new DJ Beca remix?”

 

“Sure. Yes.”

 

Chloe literally squeals, and she leans over the back of the chair to watch Beca pull up the song and press play. The music is splayed out in separate lines of brightly colored bars across her desktop. Beca watches the cursor eat up each note for the entire opening before she realizes that the thump against her back is Chloe’s knee popping to the beat. When she looks up, Chloe’s watching the screen, too, and her entire body is moving along with the first verse, her mouth open in a wide smile. During the build, her eyes flicker down to Beca’s, and her smile widens even more. Then it’s the drop and Chloe steps back so she can actually _dance_.

 

With the pounding heart that comes from letting anyone listen to her music, Beca spins in her chair so she can watch Chloe. It’s a five-minute song that she’s tweaked so many times it feels much shorter, but now it’s like she’s hearing it for the first time, every beat stretching and catching . Chloe’s a little uncoordinated from the tempo shifts that Beca’s worked in, but her entire body moves in smooth lines, like she knows every breath and release in the chorus (and she should, _she sang them_ ). Chloe pauses at the top of the second drop, hip cocked and hands folded behind her head. It doesn’t come. Beca’s delayed it by two seconds. In the silence Chloe’s eyes fly open. Her gaze is dark and blue and hot and it pins Beca in her seat. Beca swallows. And then the beat drops and Chloe sinks her hips into the extra layer of bass that shakes the entire room. The sound’s so big it sends a wave over Beca, a euphoric rush that floods her brain and shudders through her body.

 

The bassline fades with a few sprinklings of synth. Beca’s left with a dumb smile and a buzzing in her blood.

 

“Oh my god.” Chloe skips over and pulls Beca out of the chair into a tight hug. “That’s amazing. Beca, you’re _amazing_.”

 

“You like it?” Beca asks weakly. She knows she’s good, but—well, Chloe thinks it’s amazing.

 

“Yes. I love it. You’re disgustingly talented."

 

“Well,” Beca says with a wink she doesn’t quite feel, “I did have some help.”

 

“Like I deserve any credit for that.” Chloe leans back to look her straight in the eye. It’s a little scary how sincere she is. “Seriously. This is incredible.”

 

Beca doesn’t know what to say to that but, “Thanks.” Chloe is smiling softly down at her like she’s just discovered something precious, and _wow_ Beca is looking at her mouth for way too long. “I—“ she squirms. “Thanks, really.”

 

“What’s wrong?” Chloe lets her go.

 

Beca scrambles back until she hits the desk. She regrets it instantly, but staying close would’ve been worse. This is just the most awkward. “Nothing.”

 

Chloe frowns, steps toward her again. “Hey, I’m serious,” she says. The excited edge to her voice is gone, and now it’s just Chloe, Chloe being _Chloe_ at Beca. “You know I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it. You’re really good.” She’s almost within arm’s reach again, and Beca doesn’t know how to get out of this without Chloe getting more concerned and coming closer. “God, Beca, you could actually—“

 

“I like you,” Beca says in a rush. Chloe stops mid-sentence, almost stumbles into a standstill. “I mean, I’m—” Beca winces, casting for something less middle school and coming up empty, “—I like you. You know what I mean.” Chloe doesn’t respond, but she also doesn’t move. Beca takes it as a sign to keep going, so she takes a shaky breath and swallows the thing (an awful mix of courage and terror) tearing up her throat. She stares just past Chloe’s shoulder, blurs the rest of her vision and focuses on the moulding around the doorframe. “I get that this isn’t great timing, and you probably don’t want to deal with this right before graduation, so I’m sorry about that. You should know, though. About that. I know I’ve been weird lately, and it’s nothing you’re doing. It’s just, I—” Beca sighs heavily. She’s almost done. She’s almost at the point where she can run away and not hate herself for it. “I really like you, a lot. I’m trying to work it out. So um. Sorry for being awkward—”

 

“Beca.”

 

“—I totally get if you just want to forget that I ever said this—”

 

“Beca.” Chloe’s suddenly near, her hand on Beca’s shoulder. Beca stares at her lips again.

 

“—What?”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

Of course Chloe would say that. Of course it’s not actually. “You don’t have to say that, it’s fine—”

 

“Oh my god, _Beca_ ,” Chloe says in that fond way, and Beca shuts up. “I’m saying it because it _is_ okay. Okay?”

 

Beca nods dumbly. Chloe’s hand slides to the base of her neck. Beca’s eyes definitely don’t flutter at the sensation.

 

“Stop thinking so much.” And then Chloe’s hand is slipping up into Beca’s hair and she is tugging so Beca tilts her head back and she is _kissing_ Beca. She presses soft, lingering kisses all along Beca’s mouth, like she’s waiting for Beca to catch up.

 

An instinctual want sweeps through Beca’s body. She presses back, hard, and Chloe makes a delighted sound that shivers down Beca’s spine. Beca’s hands find the curve of Chloe’s waist, slide possessively down and into the back pockets of her shorts. Touching her this much makes Beca dizzy, makes her want more and never stop. It’s better than any visceral high a song has _ever_ given her. Beca curls her fingers reflexively around Chloe’s ass and pulls her close, closer, so close that Chloe loses her balance and has to catch herself on the desk.

 

Chloe turns her head away with a laugh.

 

“Sorry,” Beca says. Chloe is so close, with her wide smile and bright eyes and ridiculous body, and Beca wants to keep her there forever.

 

“Don’t be,” Chloe says. “Stop being sorry, I’m starting to feel insulted.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

Chloe rolls her eyes and kisses her again.

 

“So this is a thing now, I guess,” Beca mumbles.

 

“It could be.” Chloe smiles against her lips. “We could be a secret or the—”

 

Beca groans, “Don’t, please,” and opens her mouth to swallow Chloe’s laughter.

 

Chloe’s tongue slips past her lips, plays along the inside of her mouth. Beca’s hands move without focus, from Chloe’s hips to her shoulders, down her arms and back, up under the edge of her shirt and Chloe's skin is _so soft_. Chloe bites down on her lower lip, making Beca whimper. Her fingers follow the line of Chloe’s spine and find a spot that makes Chloe arch into her, makes Chloe inhale sharply and tilt Beca’s chin so she can kiss along her jaw to her neck.

 

“Fuck,” Beca says. Chloe scrapes her teeth over the sensitive skin at the base of her throat and her hips press insistently against Beca’s and, “ _Fuck_.” She strokes along Chloe’s spine again. Chloe moans, and it’s the sexiest sound Beca’s ever heard. She wants to hear it again, _soon_ , but Chloe is pulling away and straightening up. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes dark, and Beca wants so much it aches.

 

“Hey.” Chloe’s so breathless that Beca’s heart jumps, and she sounds like that because of _Beca_.

 

“Hey.”

 

“We should talk about this,” Chloe says, still breathless.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You know, because we obviously have feelings.”

 

“Right, feelings.”

 

“And we should actually talk about them instead of pretending they don’t exist.”

 

Beca hears Chloe drop the hint, _she’s known all along_ , and Beca’s so glad it worked out this way, because otherwise she’d be mortified. Instead, she’s too turned on to feel anything about it.

 

“But can we keep doing this first?”

 

“Duh,” Beca says, and it’s the simplest thing to lean forward and catch Chloe’s lips with her own, to press her fingers to that stretch of muscle on Chloe’s back and feel the resulting shudder with her whole body.

 

\--

 

So Beca stays at Barden. The reasoning is stupidly complicated. She doesn’t really want an education, but at least Barden’s music program is decent and she’ll get a steady gig at the radio station with free access to the booth.

 

(She almost regrets it, though, when she sends Dillon her remix and he emails her back immediately: _BECAAAAAAA THIS IS SO SICK. COME TO LA. LIVE ON MY COUCH. WE CAN DO SHOWS TOGETHER I’LL FEED YOU BACON AND BUY YOU SHOTS. MY CAT’S THE SHIT, SHE’LL LOVE YOU_. But Chloe’s right. She can make music anywhere, and at Barden she won’t have to worry about paying rent or driving or, even, putting on real clothes to go to rehearsal.)

 

Plus—and this is just a nice bonus—she’s closer to Chloe on the east coast. Chloe’s coming back to Barden for grad school, and they’ve agreed that they’ll wait and try dating _then_ , but Beca sees her twice over the summer and Chloe promises to visit during the fall semester, so. Beca doesn’t think about it too much, except that she would see way less of Chloe if she were in LA.

 

“You’re gross,” is what Cynthia Rose calls it, when Beca begrudgingly explains it to the Bellas to satisfy their curiosity when they’re all back together.

 

“Pretty much,” Stacie agrees. “You’re not even in an LDR, but you’re all mushy about it like you are.” She smirks challengingly at Beca’s glare.

 

Beca almost defends herself with something awful like _it doesn’t even feel long distance_ , but luckily she catches herself. Everyone else lets it go in favor of planning for auditions and Hood Night.

 

“You’re still gross,” Cynthia Rose says weeks later. “Also, whipped.”

 

Beca pauses in the middle of plucking out the alto part on the piano. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

Fat Amy makes a whip crack sound from the back row. “Face it, cap, the only reason we’re learning this song is because your not-ladypiece likes it. She put it on Facebook.”

 

Beca blushes. “She’s not my ladypiece.”

 

“Right, exactly, so you're extra-whipped. As whipped as my mum's chocolate mousse, and my mum has very muscular forearms. I thought this was for Alumni Day, shouldn’t it be…a little more Gloria Estefan, a little less a ploy to get it in with a specific alumni? Alumna? Lady-alum?”

 

“Oh my god.” Beca turns to the three newly-initiated freshmen. “Ignore that. This song is a great exercise in listening. Also, I know the woman who sings it originally, so it’s cool that I can get her music more exposure, and that’s all.”

 

It's not a total lie, Beca thinks as they go over the arrangement as a group. Chloe’s been getting into guitar-playing girls since she settled in New York, so it’s no surprise that she heard Aly play a show in Brooklyn in September and immediately befriended her. Beca got a text about it in the middle of her composition class and started laughing because of course Aly would re-enter her life through Chloe Beale. Jesse had to fake an enormous coughing fit to cover for her.

 

Cynthia Rose takes the final lead, and Beca can almost hear the sound of Chloe’s voice in the snapchat she got that morning, sliding into the same words, _take me south, take me home_ , _hold your own and claim me_. She sings so hard her head spins.

 

They don't end that strong, but Cynthia Rose still lets out a whoop and says, "Damn. Damn, we sound good." They do. They're going to sound amazing. Beca smiles and smiles and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Dillon and Aly named for Dillon Francis and Aly Spaltro (Lady Lamb the Beekeeper). One more time, you can listen to the [playlist for this fic right here.](http://8tracks.com/robonyong/it-only-comes-in-waves/)
> 
> Thank you for reading and taking this self-indulgent journey with me.


End file.
